GOVERNMENTS, CENSORSHIP AND THE ARTS

Published: August 13, 1989

The relationships between governments and the arts around the world can be strikingly different from the American pattern, but some of the same underlying issues - appropriateness and scope of government financing, the way grants are given, censorship - are familiar. And, according to reports from New York Times correspondents and bureaus around the world, these relationships are changing - in some places, such as the Soviet Union, dramatically so.

In the wake of the recent controversy over exhibitions of works by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, and the vote by the United States Senate to eliminate grants for art deemed, in the words of legislation introduced by Senator Jesse Helms, to ''promote, disseminate or produce obscene or indecent materials'' or ''material which denigrates the objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particular religion or nonreligion,'' many in the arts see the support given to artists by some countries as strikingly generous.

That generosity, in fact, exists, especially in such countries as France, with its annual subsidy for artists this year at $1.6 billion, and West Germany, with its 82 symphony orchestras, 58 opera houses and music halls and about 280 legitimate theaters. But in some countries the relationship between government and the arts is shifting. In Britain, arts organizations complain about cutbacks in funding, and the Royal Shakespeare Company reports a deficit of $1.9 million.

When, as in Britain, governments reduce support for the arts - or keep them at the same level while inflation cuts the purchasing power of the subsidies - private companies are often asked to fill the gap. In Britain, corporate sponsorship is estimated at $48 million today, up from as little as $800,000 in 1976. Corporate sponsorship brings its own problems, however. A study in Japan notes that businesses tend to want to sponsor ''established artists, or flashy performances that can attract a big crowd.''

Censorship is another arena of change. In the Soviet Union, shifts in what is allowed to be seen, especially on stage and in the movies, have been so striking that references are made to ''full-frontal glasnost.'' In West Germany, where Nazi art continues to be a thorny issue, a prominent patron of the arts was widely criticized for having commissioned busts of himself and his wife by Hitler's favorite sculptor. In Mexico, the continuing ambivalence of cultural politics resulted in the abrupt closing of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City that offended religious sensibilities and forced the resignation of the museum director.

Some arts executives complain about more subtle types of censorship. In Israel, the tradition of freedom of expression flourishes, but occasionally, as when photographs showing the interrogation of Palestinians were removed from an exhibition, ''security reasons'' are invoked. In Britain, Sir Max Stafford-Clark, artistic director of the adventurous Royal Court Theater, has no concerns about censorship because of offensive content or political considerations, but says that because of cuts in government funding, ''what is being censored are the plays that aren't being put on, the plays that aren't being written.''

Here are reports on issues surrounding government support for the arts in nine countries.